It was a custom of ours for some time in our home, after we were through with our dinner, for one of us to grab Bartlett’s Poems for Occasions off the shelf and partnering with someone else at the table fan the pages until they would holler, Stop. Whichever poem the one fanning the pages [...]
Once, last week, on a day I had work that would take me away from the house, I drove Lia to the school where Franca teaches so that she could stay with her mother. It was summer vacation still and Lia was happy to be going to the school because only the teachers would be [...]
In some parts they call it catting. In others, it’s hogging or stumping or dogging. If it is trout, not catfish, you are after, it is considered art, not a sport, and known to practitioners as tickling. However, those of, shall we say, a bit more extreme-minded personality, prefer something a bit ornerier as their [...]
Other than early on when we had this beast by the tail and no idea what we were doing, there have been only a handful of occasions where we were truly and very stressed for Lia’s immediate safety. Not that there’s not enough room for that kind of intensity (or insanity) in any routine [...]
For another account of the effect diabetes has had on our family since Lia’s diagnosis I’ll turn to one of our two other children. Though I am not always a very good practitioner of this, if you can be successful in getting them to open up honestly or are yourself perceptive enough, children can be [...]
Word of his death came to me in the middle of the night as I was making my lone way back to where he had lived. I had been far away visiting other family when his heart condition worsened to the point that I felt that was where I needed to be. I came as [...]
Other than Franca, there are a few people who know me very well to whom I look for friendship and support in handling the routine face-off between family, work, and pleasure, and of which of course in our house, diabetes plays a significant part in all three. Their opinions, advice and experiences help shape my [...]
With Lia unable to attend the JDRF Walk to Cure Diabetes because of stomach ills the morning of, we decided to host our own and invited some friends to participate in a Walk to Cure Liabetes this past Sunday at a local park. It was Mother’s Day and the weather that afternoon was gorgeous and [...]
The bed shuttered slightly as the train passed out of sight in the dark just down the hill from my sister’s house. Franca and I were sitting on either side of Lia, holding the hair back from her face as she vomited again into a wastebasket. The nausea had come on just after midnight when [...]
Most people don’t think much about the pancreas. Most of them of course don’t have to think about it at all. But there are a few who, because of events that have occurred outside of their control, must spend a great deal of thought deliberating exactly what it means to act like a pancreas. In [...]